


Lost It All, Got Left For Dead

by BeastOfTheSea



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Gen, Start Of Darkness, Tragedy, crack!theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 18:47:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2822396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeastOfTheSea/pseuds/BeastOfTheSea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A man after he's lost everything. Including his memory.</p><p>***spoilers for Chapter 19x pt. 2***</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost It All, Got Left For Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Based off a crack!theory that I contemplated - namely, that Ninian's memory loss in response to extreme stress is inherited.  
> Used a bit of text from [an article from the Encyclopedia Britannica.](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/409455/Nergal)

Morning finds him collapsed on the ground. He pushes himself up, and discovers that he’s lost himself.

A mysterious mixture cakes his sleeves; upon inspection, it’s a mixture of tears and snot and blood. His head’s sore, his cheeks unpleasantly crusty with dried salt, and his lower face uncomfortably covered with flaking blood. He evidently had a bad time of it recently.

He muses on this because he has no idea _why_. His mind is blank and clear. Peaceful, even. He is aware that he should have something in there, but he can’t bring himself to be too concerned.

In the state he’s in, perhaps it’s better that he doesn’t remember.

He picks himself up and walks.

* * *

Everywhere on his way lie the bodies of dead men and great beasts. He sucks in a breath, notes the slight labor it takes, and wonders at the feeling that it _shouldn’t be this way_. A memory? It flits towards the edge of his mind, then away again. It can’t be important. He _can_ breathe, after all. That matters.

He licks his hand and scrubs his face, hoping he’s presentable. He has a perfectly good cloak on, so his sleeves can be kept out of view. Not that it matters, since he doesn’t find himself caring much for others’ opinions

_(everything he cared for is gone)_

but grooming is important. Unconsciously, his hand reaches up to slick back his hair. Yes, he’s always been a well-groomed man.

He isn’t sure why the book under his arm is important, but he hugs it close to him nonetheless. It has something to do with why he’s wearing such a dark cloak. He should poke at that something that _might_ be a memory, but he shies away from that instinctively.

( _no no no. he doesn’t want to remember. that way only lies pain. he won’t remember. no. he won’t.)_

He sees the burnt remains of something that might once have been a house, and several people sitting around within it. Well then. He’ll ask people what all the bother’s about. _Something_ major obviously happened, even if he doesn’t remember it.

* * *

Oh, fancy that. It’s the end of the world.

He drinks what ale they have and listens to their explanations. Rivers run backwards, fire rains from the sky – to them, a man losing his memory is positively _mundane_. One man’s mother has apparently gone comatose and just rocks to herself in a corner. Another’s brother just dances around a tree, babbling nonsense to ward off the bad things. Yet another’s…

Well, suffice to say that they regard his case as singularly normal, compared to all that’s gone on, and they’re even impressed that he’s retained his sanity – albeit at the cost of his memory. It’s a minor price, one woman says, her eyes deep-sunken and her once-rich skirt covered with dust. It’s not as though memory matters in these times, anyway. Not now that everything that ever was has been turned on its head, and all the lessons of the past become useless.

If anything, they’re surprised that he lost his memory of the great beasts. Foul creatures, they tell him, and he takes it in without question. The banes of humanity, the dragons. Now slain by their own actions – it must be them who broke the world, surely it was them. The heaven-sent Generals are tracking them down, slaughtering the survivors before they can rally and slaughter humanity. It’s the way of the world. Either they go or we do.

He wonders at this, something within him jolting him out of his floating complacency, and tries to recall what he knew about the beasts – the dragons. Surely that isn’t right, his instincts prompt. Surely –

Pain flashes through him at the memory of a great green beast, butchered like a hog –

 _(buried her with these two hands, these two hands and magic, worked day and night and whined through the tears, babbled to himself like a drunken fool, and he might as well have been drunk, hadn’t he? because he’d failed, he might as well have been drunk, failed her and the children and everyone, he wished they’d killed him along with her, he should be dead, he wanted to be dead, might as well have been dead, he wanted to be dead, he just_ didn’t want to be – _)_

His head hurts. When he looks up at last, his hand clutching at his head as though he could keep it from coming apart, people are staring. He tries to speak, opens his mouth for the response, and is hit by another wall of pain.

That’s that, then. He won’t think about it. He doesn’t want to think about it. It isn’t important. He won’t think about

_(her)_

that beast.

Repulsive beasts, those dragons.

That is, the very thought of them repels him. His head hurts, his heart constricts, and he wants to die. They must be horrible indeed, if he remembers that when he remembers nothing else.

He assures the others that he’s fine and agrees with them. Yes. Heaven bless the Generals. Good riddance to the dragons. Good riddance to all of that.

If his speech is slightly slurred and he’s just agreeing with whatever they say – what of it? They’re right. They know better, after all. He’ll learn the world from them. He’ll learn…

What was he even thinking about, again? He can’t remember.

* * *

 

He’s something called a sorcerer, a shaman, a scholar of elder magic. The words on the page are familiar once he opens the tome at his companions' insistence. Yes. He remembers this. He remembers the darkness.

The darkness will stand by him always. Nothing else in this world will.

He pages through it, his finger skimming down the lines. A beautiful thing, really. He notices some of the people look at him with fear. Fools. He knows. The dark has always been his ally. It’s pure sentimentality talking, but he almost feels that it’s the only thing that _understands_ him, that _loves_ him –

( _she did_ )

He shakes his head, and the fragment of memory falls like a leaf. A random thought, nothing important.

What? Oh, someone’s asking if he remembers his name.

He stalls for time, gaze traveling down the black-lettered page, and a passage catches his eye.

_We speak now of Nergal, the destroying flame, god of pestilence, hunger, and devastation…_

“Nergal,” he responds; his voice sounds strange in his ears, and he modifies it to a friendly tone. It comes easily. He… thinks he must have been an affable man, once. Perhaps there’s a sense that something broke within him, and he’ll never be so again, but – he can fake it until he recovers. Surely he’ll recover. He can’t remember what broke him, after all. It can’t be permanent.

“My name is Nergal.” He has to remember how to chuckle, but he does so after a moment. “Of course I remember that. Surely I’m not so far gone that you imagine I’ve forgotten _everything_?”

* * *

If pestilence, hunger, and devastation is to rule this world, he might as well be its god.

_(nothing else remains to him, after all)_

* * *

Despite his best attempts, he can’t find attachment again. He doesn’t age; he must have been a great sorcerer in his time – whenever that was.

_(not great enough)_

For a time, he contents himself with helping the people to whom he spoke. But the Ending Winter turns out to not be the end; the land recovers, the people with it, and he finds himself unneeded. He loses interest. Grows bored. Drifts on.

He has no interest in a family – the thought causes him pain. Something in him sneers at the thought of building a community – a flicker of someone who devoted her life to helping the helpless, and received only animal savagery in the end. Religion brings blessed laughter – no god has ever helped _him_ , and the joke is that anyone believes at all.

Exhausting all avenues of society, he turns inward and rediscovers (he swears he loved this once) his love of study. And what a love it is. He has all the time in the world. He has nothing else to distract him. He has nothing – but an endless river of dark.

* * *

He could have gone on like that forever – literally forever – but instead he meets a man in the desert. Archsage Athos, the greatest student of anima to ever walk the earth. A genius. A scholar. A devourer of knowledge. Someone who _understands_.

For the first time in five hundred years, something loosens in his chest, and he’s _happy_.

For a little while.

* * *

He’s as amazed as Athos to find Arcadia. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. It’s a dream come to life. An epitome of peace.

Now, if only his head would stop _hurting_.

Like a drumbeat in his head, his mind recites

_(you were weak you were weak you were weak)_

Privately, not even telling Athos, he isolates himself from those beasts. Friendly or not, they make his muscles tense and his head hurt. Sometimes a grief too great for words comes over him, and he comes back to himself to find himself weeping. It’s disgusting weakness – and that makes him weep harder.

There’s a little girl in the village, a girl whose father is dead and mother is sickly, and they say she can see the future. A bright little girl, really. Vaguely interested in elder magic, in the way certain gifted children are. He should tutor her.

_(“daddy, what’s that book about?”)_

Her presence makes him sick at heart. He rationalizes it, tries to tell himself the feeling in the pit of his stomach is disgust and not self-loathing. She’s not human. No matter how human she appears, she’s not. And someone like her… someone like her will never fit in.

_(“daddy, why don’t the other children like me?”_

_“daddy, why do they change so quickly?”_

_“daddy–“)_

Never. And the brat’s presence hurts him at heart.

“Mister Nergal… why are you… sad so much?”

No, her whining, piping voice hurts his ears. That’s all.

Withdrawing from society, or at least any society that isn’t _human,_

( _humans bore him, really – too short-lived, too shallow, too simple-minded –_

 _dragons gall him, humans tire him, the only one for whom he_ can _care is one man and one man alone –)_

he turns back to magic once again.

He finds… interesting things in the dragons’ libraries. Interesting indeed. A new route to power, speedy and limitless. Forbidden, naturally, and abominable… preserved only for academic curiosity… he studies it only as such…

_(weak weak weak)_

The drumbeat in his mind won’t quiet down. Try as he might, he can’t avoid the beasts entirely, and each time he sees them, it provokes a painful flash in his head –

_(with this ring I thee wed)_

_(she looks like you)_

_(do you think he looks like me?)_

_(another nightmare? daddy’s here, shush)_

_(she can hardly sleep through the night, I don’t know what’s wrong)_

_(what’s going on abroad?)_

_(they’ll never come here. we live in peace here.)_

_(we have to go!)_

_(this world’s gone mad)_

_(!!!don’t go with them!!!)_

_(bad men took her away)_

_(I have to … save mommy)_

_(I’ll come for you. I’ll be back.)_

_(I’ll be… I’ll be)_

_(_ weak _)_

Power matters… only power.

He rationalizes his single-minded drive, devises explanations. Everything takes energy, everything grows…

_(everything dies)_

Ultimately, none of that matters, though. He wants power. The reason why is…

_(……Aenir? don’t… under…stand… but…)_

…it doesn’t matter. It’s not important. Nothing is important.

Except power.


End file.
